Psalm 54:7

The heading of the psalm ties it to one of the hardest times in David’s life: “To the chief Musician on Neginoth, Maschil, A Psalm of David, when the Ziphims came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?” Saul was hunting David to kill him, and David was living as a fugitive in caves and wilderness strongholds, in constant danger of capture or death. The Ziphites, the people of the wilderness of Ziph and of David’s own tribe of Judah, twice told Saul where he was hiding (1 Samuel 23:19–23, 1 Samuel 26:1–5). David had already been anointed as the next king of Israel, so God’s promise over his future stood in sharp tension with the danger of his present.

The psalm moves in three steps. David cries out for God to save him from his enemies (Psalm 54:1–3), he declares his confidence that God is his helper (Psalm 54:4–5), and he closes with this vow of praise and thanks. A vow of praise like this is common at the end of a psalm of lament, where the one praying promises to give thanks when God has rescued him. David makes his promise while Saul is still searching for him, so his praise rests on his confidence in God’s character, ahead of the rescue itself.

“I will freely sacrifice unto thee” joins two words. “Freely” is nᵉdâbâh, which means spontaneity, something given of one’s own accord, and it is the word for the freewill offering in Israel’s worship. The Law required some sacrifices for particular purposes, such as the sin offering and the guilt offering. A freewill offering was given simply because the worshipper wanted to give it, out of devotion and gratitude. “Sacrifice” is zâbach, to slaughter an animal, usually in sacrifice. David is promising a real offering, most likely a thank offering, one of the peace offerings, brought once the deliverance had come.

So David’s worship is willing, the free gift of a grateful heart, and the willing heart is what makes an offering pleasing to God. David himself says that “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17). Hosea speaks of rendering “the calves of our lips” (Hosea 14:2), and the letter to the Hebrews calls believers to offer God the sacrifice of praise continually, the fruit of lips that confess his name (Hebrews 13:15). Paul asks us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). The freewill offering that David promised at the altar is now brought by God’s people as praise, thanks and lives wholly given over to him.

David’s second promise is spoken: “I will praise thy name, O LORD.” The verb yâdâh comes from a root about holding out the hand, and it means to give thanks, to praise and to confess. It is open, spoken thanks, a declaration of gratitude and adoration before God.

In Scripture a name stands for the whole person, his character, reputation and authority. The word shêm here means all that God has shown himself to be. To praise his name is to honour all of it: his holiness, power, love, faithfulness and justice, the deeds by which he has made himself known, and his covenant with his people. The name David calls on is LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, the name of the self-existent God who told Moses “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). A hunted man is calling on the God who has bound himself to his people by promise and keeps faith with them in their distress.

David gives his reason at the end of the verse: “for it is good.” The “it” points back to the name of the LORD. The word ṭôwb is good in the widest sense, covering what is pleasant, excellent, beneficial and morally right. Said of God, it speaks of his kindness, his faithfulness, his righteousness and the good he does for all he has made. That goodness belongs to who God is, and it holds whatever happens, so it gives David a reason to worship that stands firm through the Ziphites’ betrayal and Saul’s pursuit.

David’s sacrifice and praise are his answer to who God is, and he offers them to honour God, with no thought of earning his favour. The Psalms come back to this again and again: the LORD is good (Psalm 100:5), and his people give him thanks because he is good (Psalm 107:1, Psalm 118:1).

Verse 7 opens with “For”, which gives the ground of the thanks: “he hath delivered me out of all trouble.” The verb nâtsal means to snatch away, and here it is used of rescue. David is the one delivered, and “out of all trouble” marks what he is taken from. The word for trouble, tsârâh, means tightness, and figuratively distress, affliction and adversity of every kind. David says “all trouble”, so God’s rescue reaches every part of what he has suffered.

Other psalms say the same. “The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles” (Psalm 34:17), and though the afflictions of the righteous are many, the LORD delivers him out of them all (Psalm 34:19). In Psalm 18:48 David praises the God who delivers him from his enemies.

“And mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.” The word for eye, ʻayin, is the ordinary word for an eye, and râʼâh is the usual verb for seeing, used literally or figuratively. Together they speak of David witnessing for himself what God does about his enemies. Those enemies, ʼôyêb, are literally “those who hate”, adversaries and foes, and Saul and the Ziphites had made themselves exactly that toward David.

David’s promise to sacrifice freely points ahead to the most willing offering of all. Jesus laid down his life of his own accord, in love and in obedience to the Father (John 10:18). His whole life was a freewill offering of perfect obedience, ending in his death on the cross, where God commended his love toward us (Romans 5:8) and his name was glorified. The goodness David praised is shown in full in the Son, the brightness of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). Because of his sacrifice, we bring God our own sacrifice of praise through him, with no animal’s blood, and his goodness endures for ever in the new covenant Christ established.

Verse 7 looks forward too. By his death and resurrection Christ delivered his people from the deepest trouble of all, the bondage of sin, the sting of death and the power of the devil. On the cross he “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). Through death he destroyed him who had the power of death, the devil (Hebrews 2:14), and God gives us the victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:54–57). The triumph David expected to see over Saul’s men is seen in full in Christ’s victory over every spiritual enemy, and in him we are “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37).

These two verses give us David’s way of worship in the middle of danger. He promised his offering and his praise while Saul’s men were still searching the wilderness for him, because the name of the LORD is good and that goodness holds in every circumstance. He spoke of his deliverance as finished because the God he trusted keeps his word. The same LORD receives the willing praise of his people now, offered through Christ, and the same goodness stands behind it. His name is still good, and the God who delivered David out of all trouble is the God who has won the final victory over sin and death in his Son.